


For the Best

by hmweasley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anti-Muggle Content, Gen, Torture, the violence could be more graphic than it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 05:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14230782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hmweasley/pseuds/hmweasley
Summary: When Astoria questioned her parents, she was always told that things were for the best. It's not until a student is tortured in front of her that she starts to believe her parents might be wrong.





	For the Best

“It’s for the best.”

Her parents had told her that in various ways her entire life, and Astoria had believed them because they were always confident in their replies.

“Why can’t I go into the village to play with the Muggle children?”

“Muggles have persecuted us before. Staying away from them is for the best.”

“Why would it be bad if the Muggleborn became the head of the department?”

“She wasn’t raised in our world. It’s best when people who understand our ways are in charge.”

Most of the time, their explanations hadn’t quite satisfied Astoria’s curiosity, but she’d accepted them, knowing her parents were wiser than she was. 

Sitting in Defence, she wondered how she would have come to recognize her parents as being wrong if there had never been a war. She thought that maybe she would have lived her entire life continuing to push away the niggling doubt.

It had been one thing to accept her parents’ warnings that Muggleborns were better off with the Muggles who raised them. It was a far different thing to watch someone being tortured before your eyes after your parents had explained in a letter that the new punishments were “for the best.”

A few of her fellow Slytherins were laughing as Carrow “demonstrated” a curse on the girl, and that only made it harder for Astoria to keep her vomit down. She lowered her eyes, unable to look at the girl’s contorted face or Carrow’s joyous one. He lived for these demonstrations. They were the closest he’d ever gotten to teaching them anything, but he hadn’t a clue what Astoria was actually learning from the experience.

The girl was begging him to stop, just as she had tried to do every other time he’d done this to her. It never worked.

Astoria knew, if she were a braver person, she’d stand up and yell at Carrow to stop, but she couldn’t do it. Other students had tried, and it had led to them being tortured too. Perhaps they had less inner turmoil than Astoria did because they’d done the right thing, but she still find it in herself to do it.

Carrow went on to the class about how the girl was surely enjoying herself. He knew it even if she screamed back that she wasn’t. Girls like her, he said, always enjoyed it.

Astoria scrunched herself so low in her chair that she almost disappeared below the table. No one around her was paying attention, too hypnotized by what was happening at the front of the room. Staring down at the wood, Astoria began to count in her head as a way to block out the world.

She’d started many letters to her parents demanding to know why they believed Snape was the best choice to run Hogwarts when he let this happen, but she’d thrown every attempt into the fireplace. They were only another way she could wind up being the one tortured herself. It didn’t take a genius to realize the mail she received had been opened before it reached her or that it was happening the other way around too.

Her parents knew it. She could tell from the exaggerated way they wrote that was unlike the parents she knew. She didn’t think they were lying when they said it was “for the best” though, and she’d burned their letters along with her own half-written ones.

Someday, she’d have to face them in person, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to say everything she wanted to. But maybe someday she would.


End file.
